Safe
by helloitea
Summary: Wyatt always checked her harness. Or the one where Lucy's harness breaks mid-flight and Wyatt blames himself. Features pre Wyatt/Lucy, an over-protective soldier and a historian with a crush on a lot of pain meds. Have fun kids!


Wyatt always checked her harness. Ever since that first trip, he'd always helped her fit the buckles and tighten the straps like it was perfectly natural, just another way he was keeping her safe. It was like Lucy's personal security blanket; Wyatt would never let anything happen to her. Him checking her harness was like a gentle reminder of that. It grounded her, reminded her that she would always be safe with Wyatt there because he would protect her.

But that day he'd taken a hard hit to the ribs; one of Flynn's men got a lucky hit in. With a shovel. Lucy had checked his side afterward and felt definite movement. Wyatt had gone white with the pain but he didn't make a sound. She wasn't fooled.

She and Rufus each took one of his arms and helped him back into the Lifeboat but even that small action seemed to have drained him. He settled into his chair with a relieved sigh and Lucy watched from the corner of her eye while he shimmied into his harness with as little movement as possible. She dropped into the seat opposite, trying to appear like she wasn't watching his every move, and pulled her own straps over her shoulders. Once she got the buckles situated Wyatt started to learn forward to perform his routine check. He barely made it two inches forward before a wince crossed his face and Lucy pushed him gently back.

"It's been a few trips. I think I know how to work a seatbelt by now," she tried to reassure him but she wasn't sure her voice came out entirely steady. It was worry for Wyatt, yes, but it was also nervousness and fear. Wyatt always, _always_ checked her harness. The thought of flying without the certainty that she was one-hundred percent safe terrified her. But she wasn't just going to let him aggravate his injuries for her peace of mind.

Several emotions flickered across his face, frustration, anger, worry, before finally settling into his trademark teasing smirk.

"Whatever you say, ma'am," he replied, settling back into his chair with feigned relaxation.

Lucy rolled her eyes and went about checking over her harness. The familiar exchange did something to soothe her nerves and Wyatt's careful gaze watching her hands to make sure she secured everything properly finally helped the chill in her spine to settle. He would tell her if she'd done something wrong.

"Passengers, prepare for lift off," Rufus mumbled from the pilot's seat as he flipped the last switch and the Lifeboat began to shake.

She couldn't stop her mind from jumping back to that car and the sensation of drowning when the shaking got harder as the rings picked up speed. She took a deep breath to force the image from her mind and the lump from her throat, her grip on the chair tightening. She refused to let that memory control her. Wyatt locked eyes with her across the confines of the Lifeboat. He smirked and the blanket of peace and security fell over her. She was safe. She felt her hands relax.

And then it was like the floor was pulled out from under her as the machine made the jump to the space between times and the cabin was filled with the sound of tearing fabric and grinding metal. She thought she heard Wyatt scream her name as she was ripped from her chair but she didn't really take in much beyond the ceiling of the Lifeboat coming at her face. She threw up her hand just in time but she was thrown with such force. A snap rang through the pod with surprising clarity amongst the cacophony of mid-flight chaos. Fire erupted in her arm and Lucy would have screamed if at that moment her head hadn't connected with the console and all she knew was darkness.

Wyatt had never been so glad that trips in the Lifeboat were short. It all happened in slow motion for him; he saw Lucy smile at him, he felt the swooping rush of the time machine taking flight, he heard the rip of stitches coming undone, he saw the buckle snap and he saw Lucy fly upwards. The sound of bones cracking was long familiar to Wyatt but it had never felt so visceral as it had when Lucy impacted the ceiling. He tried to reach for her as she came crashing back down but his fingers only just grazed her sleeve as she slammed back into the floor.

The Lifeboat came to a jarring stop and Wyatt was out of his seat before Rufus had even managed to turn and take in the chaos of the cabin. He was on his knees, gently turning Lucy as he tried to stabilize her neck, the twinge of his ribs buried under adrenaline and _oh God, please let her be breathing!_

His fingers found her neck while his hand anxiously pushed back her hair, desperate to do something helpful.

"Come on, babydoll," he whispered, not daring to draw a breath until he felt a beat beneath his fingers. It seemed to take an eternity but finally there it was, thready and weak but there. Air left him like a punch as he curled protectively over her and pressed his forehead to hers. "Thank you," he whispered, not sure, never sure, if someone was actually listening but grateful anyway.

Wyatt felt a hand on his shoulder and almost leapt at its owner, would have if he wasn't afraid that if he took his finger away from that pulse it would disappear again. Rufus looked down at him with wide eyes, a medical team standing just behind him. He must have gotten past Wyatt while he was focused on Lucy. God knows how, the Lifeboat was so small.

"You need to let the doctors check her out, Wyatt," the pilot said, voice holding something like an order in it.

It was the tone that did it; Wyatt's brain was so consumed with Lucy and the thought of almost losing her, that there was no room for anything else. Orders were easy, they didn't require any thinking. He stood up and moved aside, allowing the doctors to flood into the already crammed space to load Lucy onto a stretcher. It was only after they were lowering her from the cabin and onto the walk way that he managed to pull his focus away from the phantom pulse against his blood-soaked fingers and take notice of the world around him again.

Rufus was standing next to him with a hand on his shoulder and a medic was trying to lift his shirt to look at his ribs and there was a technician behind him examining the broken harness on Lucy's chair and he realised:

None of this would have happened if he'd just checked the damn thing himself.

The first thing Lucy became aware of was that her whole body was cold except for her hands. She was supposed to be shivering, she was sure, but the world was too heavy and she couldn't find the strength to fight against it. A corner of her mind knew that not shivering was bad, that it usually meant hypothermia or shock or something else equally terrible but the rest of her mind was telling her that there was something else, something more important she should be thinking about, something that required her to open her eyes. Whatever it was wouldn't come to her but she was sure it was important so she found the energy to crack her eyelids open.

The fluorescents over her head were blindingly bright and so were the walls. There was a dark blob leaning against one and it took her a few laborious moments of blinking to make it focus into Rufus. His eyes were closed in sleep but his hand rested over hers on the bed by her thigh. Or where her hand should have been. In its place was a large lump of white plaster.

She must have made some kind of noise because she felt a sharp pressure on her other hand and a voice breathed out her name. She turned to it and saw Wyatt sitting in a chair next to her. He looked tired and ruffled but his eyes were wide and alert as they darted around her face, drinking her in. That was went it clicked, what she was supposed to remember.

"Wyatt," she croaked, her voice scratchy with disuse. He made to stand and get the jug of water across the room but Lucy grabbed his hand, holding him in place. "Ribs?" she asked. It was important, very important, that he answer. She wasn't even sure why, she just knew that it mattered more than anything in that moment.

He blinked at her and when the question finally registered, he shook his head in disbelief.

"I'm fine," he said, "Doc bandaged me up, gave me some stuff for the pain and said I'd be back in commission in no time."

"Promise?" Lucy asked. He smiled at her gently.

"Yeah, I promise. You're stuck with me."

"No, you're stuck with me," she corrected. This seemed like a very important distinction to her addled mind because Wyatt was great, Wyatt was perfect but Lucy couldn't even sit in a chair without breaking something, couldn't even do her own seatbelt.

She only realised she'd been speaking out loud when Wyatt's face turned thunderous and his grip almost painful on her hand.

"That wasn't your fault, I was supposed to check the straps," he growled, eyes downcast and hand fisted in his lap and that wasn't right, Wyatt was only supposed to look like that at Flynn and Nazis and arseholes that grabbed her without asking, never at himself.

"They broke," she said simply, like it was the answer to every question that could possibly matter and in that moment, it was.

"Yes…?" he replied slowly, confused.

"So it's the engineer's fault, not yours," she decided. Wyatt was still frowning even if he looked more confused now than angry but that still wasn't right. "Hey," she said, trying to wave her hand in his face but resorting to jiggling her arm up and down when she remembers that Wyatt still has a hold of her fingers. "Hey, call me ma'am."

"What?"

"Call me ma'am," she demanded with more force.

Wyatt blinked but dutifully replied, "yes, ma'am," a small smirk tugging at his lips.

"Again!" she demanded imperiously.

"Okay. Why, ma'am?" he asked, smirk turning to a full-blown grin.

"Because it makes you smile and you're much more handsome when you smile," Lucy told him, her face completely serious. Wyatt just stared at her for a moment before he burst out laughing. Lucy grinned around a yawn, settling back into the pillows. "That's even better. You should laugh more."

"Go to sleep, Lucy," Wyatt chuckled.

"Can't," she insisted even though her eyes were already mostly closed, "cold." Wyatt shook his head and shrugged out of his jacket, laying it across her torso. Lucy burrowed down into it, breathing in the comforting, earthy smell of him in the fabric. _Safe,_ she thought. Wyatt would never let anything happen to her.

"Better?" he asked but Lucy was already asleep. He smiled and stretched back out in his chair. It was going to be a long night but at least she had forgiven him. Even if Wyatt disagreed with her about none of the blame falling on him, Lucy was right about one thing:

He and the engineers were going to be having a very unpleasant conversation in the morning.


End file.
